“What have I done now?”
“Naught,” she said distractedly. “But Cletus is—”
“Aye,” Padraig said, no little irritation in his voice. “I doona fancy having the slug slither across my dinner.”
“Sir Lucan insists,” Iris reminded him.
Padraig looked into her eyes and there was a sudden, hostile challenge there that Iris had never before glimpsed. “Do you always do what SirLucan demands?”
Three heartbeats passed. “No.”
“You had me fooled, then. Would that you regarded my wishes as dearly.”
Iris bristled, and she let her surprise blossom into perceived insult to cover the stew of feelings she could not immediately recognize. “Am I remiss in my duties to you, Master Boyd?”
“Nay,” he said abruptly and looked to her again, his eyes keen as ever even as his voice softened once more. “But it’s nae your duty Iwant more of.”
Padraig turned his head away and motioned the sullen, toady man toward the table while Iris cut away a portion of meat, then spooned a bit of the pretty barley and mushroom onto a small plate. She tried to ignore the fact that her hands were shaking, rattling the silver against the plate.
Cletus reached between them and took the dish, giving a sigh and an eye roll before picking up the food sloppily between his fingers and scooping it into his mouth. He tossed the soiled plate back onto the table with a clatter and then returned to his position against the wall,still chewing.
“Is that Lady Paget?” Padraig asked, changing the subject abruptly. His eyes flicked toward a stick-thin woman with steel-gray hair who sat at Lord Paget’s side.
“It must be,” Iris mused, and then cringed inwardly. He had her so flustered, she was forgetting herself.
“You doona know yourold mistress?”
“I didn’t notice her before,” Iris stammered, feeling her cheeks heat.
Lie.
“Hmm. Perhaps sitting near me wasna the best of plans. She has been noticingyou. I think she recognizes you.”
Iris’s gaze raised instinctively to the woman, and she found that, indeed, the older lady seemed to be watching Iris intently. She turned her attention to her own trencher, pushing the food about as if deciding what first to sample, but, in truth, between Hargrave’s performance and Padraig Boyd’s attention, her appetite had completely disappeared.
“After her husband’s dreadful scene, she’s likely only curious,” Iris said. “Everyone is now.”
“Maybe she thinks you’re my wife,” Padraig said smoothly and cut a perfect portion of venison with his knife. He admired it on the point, turning it this way and that. “You mightencourage it.”
Iris turned her head, feeling as though Padraig Boyd set out to shock her with every word from hismouth tonight.
He was still contemplating the venison. “That would remove suspicion from you, would it nae?” He turned his head to regard her casually. “Perhaps if I kissed you again before everyone here it would remove all doubt. I’ve thought of nothing else, since.”
Iris tried to command her slack mouth to respond, but she couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from Padraig Boyd’s shapely lips long enough to order her thoughts.
“There is no kissing at dinner,” she stammered stupidly.
“I see,” he said, nodding gravely.“Later, then.”
A strangled wheeze beyond Padraig’s wide back drew Iris’s attention, and she saw a writhing dark shape in the wedge of shadow between the walland the floor.
“Padraig,” Iris gasped.
He dropped his knife with a clatter and bolted from his seat, Peter doing the same in the next instant. Both men went to where Cletus choked and thrashed on the stones, and a moment later, Lucan stood over them.
“We need help here,” Padraig shouted toward the hall. “A man is ill.” He met Iris’s eyes.
Iris looked to the forgotten piece of meat still speared on Padraig’s knife, the dripping coagulating from thecut like blood.
